EPA: Plant's hot water may hurt river life

The J.M. Stuart plant produces enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of houses and enough hot water to raise the water temperature in a section of the Ohio River to nearly 108 degrees.

The J.M. Stuart plant produces enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of houses and enough hot water to raise the water temperature in a section of the Ohio River to nearly 108 degrees.

How hot is that? The Ohio Department of Health sets a maximum 104-degree safety limit for public hot tubs. And state and federal water-quality standards set an 89-degree limit to protect fish and wildlife.

Since 1990, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has given Dayton Power & Light permission to ignore the limit and dump as much as 600 million gallons of hot water a day into Little Three Mile Creek, a stream that runs past the plant - which is in Adams County, near the Brown County line - to the Ohio River.

The water is used to cool boilers and pipes at the coal-fired power plant.

In September, U.S. EPA officials filed a formal objection and are threatening to rewrite a state-proposed water-pollution-control permit to make the dumping stop.

U.S. EPA officials said the company hasn't provided enough evidence to show that the hot water won't harm fish and wildlife. They said they hope to see it during a public hearing the company requested, tentatively set for March.

"We have information that is part of Ohio's record that indicates that there are impacts from the discharge," said Sean Ramach, a U.S. EPA water-pollution specialist in Chicago.

Ohio EPA officials, who proposed approving the hot-water variance in November 2008, would not say whether they still support it.

"We'll be discussing this issue with the company," said George Elmaraghy, the agency's surface-water chief.

In an e-mail, Dayton Power & Light officials said surveys conducted in 2005 and 2007 support their argument that fish and wildlife in Little Three Mile Creek and the Ohio River are not harmed by the hot water.

Permit-renewal records that the Ohio EPA posted on its website on Nov. 7, 2008, call the hot-water issue a "primary continuing concern."

And EPA records say that studies performed by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission in 1999 and 2000 "found much lower numbers of fish and fish species" at the confluence of the creek and the Ohio River.

On June 28, 2007, commission officials recorded a water temperature of 107.8degrees in the Ohio River downstream from the plant.

"Dead fish were observed in the area as well," the records state.

Despite noting these issues, the Ohio EPA proposed reapproving the variance in November 2008. Records show the company performed a study on alternate hot-water disposal methods and found that none were cost-effective.

But a Jan. 26, 2000, memo that surface-water officials sent to then-agency director Chris Jones offers this explanation:

"DP&L will probably need to install additional cooling towers and/or reduce power production," the memo states. "DP&L has previously stated that plant layout would make direct discharge to the Ohio River very costly.

"Requiring DP&L to meet a maximum temperature limit will be very controversial with the power industry as a whole since no power plant now has max temperature limits and they may consider this as setting a precedent."